Róngyán zhǔ
by areuevernotgoingtofall4that
Summary: Honestly, if she had to bet on who she thought would go crazy following the death of a loved one, she wouldn't have bet on Bolin. She would have bet wrong.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Legend of Korra.**

 **A/N; This is kind of similar in some ways to my other story Stranger with a Familiar Face only this is one is a one-shot and it is a bit different.**

 **A/N: Rated T for violence.**

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Korra made her way along the familiar Republic city streets. Even after all these years and going back and forth between nations as crises' arose, Republic city was still close to her heart. She had been here more lately though than she had in the past few years trying to stop a new threat. A threat against a gang no less, The Agni Kai Triad. If it was petty theft or even grand scale larceny, she like everyone would probably leave it alone considering their nature but it wasn't theft, either small or large scale.

It was much much worse. The threat against the Agni Kai Triad wanted them dead. Wanted them all dead, so even though they were a gang it was her duty to save them from their would-be-assassin. It wasn't exactly easy though. There were several Agni Kai strongholds, safe houses, and fronts they worked out of...and there used to be a lot more. But by now she was well versed in their hideouts, that they had graciously shared after it became clear that their enemy was dead set on destroying them.

So every night, she would do a walk through of the city, passing by many of their strongholds, hoping to be there the same time as the attacker. So far she had never seen him. She had made her way half through the city when she saw a flash of orange underneath a cloak. She had heard the stories, even if they hadn't been face-to-face in a long time. The person was walking away from her towards one of the Agni Kai's strongholds. She gathered her inner strength and called out

"Bolin!" The person froze and she winced. She supposed that some part of her was hoping that the stories, even though it had been collaborated by multiple people, including Tenzin and Lin, that maybe everyone was wrong. The last ember of that hope died when his voice cut like knives through the cool night air.

"Hello Avatar," she shivered at his cold tone and his choice of words. He normally called her Korra and rarely called her that, at least when he was talking to her. It also confirmed that it was, in fact, Bolin, Bolin who must have done all that stuff. He turned around but due to his cloak, she still couldn't see his face.

"So it's true," she said slightly numbly, she knew it was but she supposed a part of her had been in denial.

"I suppose it depends on what you've heard but most of the rumors I've heard seem to be true," he said without a trace of emotion and that just made her feel worse about this situation.

The rumors. Oh, the rumors. They called him Róngyán zhǔ( The lava lord) or Róngyán èmó (The Lava Demon) depending on who you talked to. The Agni Kai Triad understandably tended toward Róngyán èmó. Either way, the things she had heard about him made her stomach churn and she had never before now been able to equate the sweet guy who had been her best friend with Róngyán zhǔ.

Due to the attacks, people were afraid to go anywhere with an Agni Kai Triad connection. At first, he refused to attack innocent people. The way the Agni Kai had responded was by hiding behind people they were doing business with, which had apparently led Bolin to his new position. Anyone who associated with the Agni Kai, was the Agni Kai and as such he would show no mercy. It meant that no one but the very desperate would come to a known Agni Kai establishment.

Technically, he was doing better than the Republic City Police Force ever had done in cutting into Agni Kai's power, because most of the remaining members had gone into hiding. They were also no longer the powerful players they were before. If it weren't for his methods, she was sure that Lin would approve. She wasn't sure what Mako would think...or would have thought if he was still alive. And that was the problem, why they were here on the street, Bolin talking to her like she was a stranger.

Mako had been killed by The Agni Kai Triad seven years ago, months after their fight with Kuvira. It hadn't been in a battle, exactly. It had been a bust with the Agni Kai, someone hadn't wanted to prison though and had used lightning on Mako killing him.

She bet if the Agni Kai knew the effect of killing that particular cop, they would have ran away instead. But they hadn't known who Mako was and even if they had, they probably would have more likely to stop due to Mako being her ex-boyfriend and good friend rather than being the brother of the only living lava bender that she knew of. Back then, Bolin was better known for his work on the big screen as Nuktuk then he was for his real life activities and abilities, even his rarer skill of lava bending.

Now few people seemed to make the connection to the once famous Nuktuk and his new name Róngyán zhǔ. Back then, those who knew him had considered him sweet and forgiving. Honestly, if she had to bet on who she thought would go crazy following the death of a loved one, she wouldn't have bet on Bolin. She would have bet wrong.

At first, she hadn't really realized how much he had gone off the deep end. She just thought he was grieving and was particularly angry but that he would get over it. Then he had left, went to one of the air temples to calm himself, supposedly to heal.

At first, she was disappointed that rather than heal together with her and Asami, he had chosen to heal alone. But she hadn't been able to blame him, much, considering that she had chosen to do the same thing following her poisoning. She had been under the illusion that things would happen exactly as it happened with her, only, maybe a little bit quicker.

Only Bolin left in the middle of the night, his fourth month there and no one had been able to find him. No one had seen or heard about him for years until he had come back to Republic City with his new mission. To kill every single member of The Agni Kai Triad. A goal that so far he was succeeding in. Bolin had killed over fifty members of the Agni Kai, maybe more. It was hard to tell considering his method of attack left so little of the victims. He would attack mostly with lava, lava that he had a great more deal control of now than he did when before he had left Republic City. A scary amount of control, or so she had heard and she had personally seen the aftermath of a few attacks. It was bone chilling to think, such brutal violence could come out of someone she used to think of like a brother. Which brought her back to what they had been talking about, rumors.

"Including the one where you suffocated them?" Korra asked hotly. Bolin was an earthbender, but it was well-known that even after his hiatus that he had never learned to metal bend. It was his only weakness, only it wasn't much of one with his lava bending skills. Once an Agni Kia Triad thought that if they fortified the outside of one of their building with metal then he wouldn't be able to get in. They were right...in a way but that hadn't saved them. He had buried the building in lava and then hardened it, cutting off their air supply. Bolin didn't respond right away. It made her wonder if maybe there was a shred of her friend left in the seemingly cold exterior of the man in front of her. Not that she could actually see his face, just hear his voice.

"I couldn't let them think they were safe. They would have made all their strongholds with metal," he said softly and with a tinge of regret but apparently not enough to stop what he was doing, Korra reminded herself. He was a killer. It was her job to stop him, no matter their pasts.

"Bolin I can't let you keep doing this," she warned him sharply, even as part of her wanted to just envelope him in a hug and hold him with her forever. She was first and foremost The Avatar, which meant at times putting aside things like old friendship to do what was right.

"They're thieves and murderers,"

"Being a thief doesn't mean that they should be killed and we have the police for that. You should know that better than anyone Bolin you were part of the Triple Threat Triad, you should sometimes things aren't as black and white."

"You think the thieves stay thieves? If we had stayed we would have become every bit what they are."

"But you didn't! Not everyone gets the same kind of break you guys did." Korra couldn't believe she was arguing in favor of the Agni Kai's. They had killed Asami's mother and Mako but she also couldn't let Bolin keep killing them to extinction. Firstly, because murder was wrong and two wrong didn't make a right. Secondly, with every life Bolin took, it would likely turn him darker and darker and any chance she had of getting the Bolin she knew back would get further and further away. "Not everyone is the same, not everyone deserves to die," She ended softly hoping that she could somehow talk of out of his crazy homicidal intent.

"Not everyone," Bolin agreed, but the second her hopes rose they were also dashed, "But everyone associated with the Agni Kai will die." Clearly, Bolin was just as dedicated to his cause, there was nothing else to do. She moved into a fighting stance one that Bolin apparently recognized because he followed form.

He was good, Korra thought as Bolin dodged the air and boulder and occasional water attacks that she was sending his way and returning her attacks with rocks of his own. As always, Bolin was very precise and his attacks seemed even quicker than the last time she remembered seeing him fight. Clearly, wherever he had gone, he hadn't just been practicing lavabending. He was also, even more, light on his feet than he had been.

However, she had gotten better too. She was able to match his pace and evade his volley of rocks either with by just moving or blocking while also attacking which Bolin deflected either with walls or throwing rocks in the way. Even though it had been years, she realized that she moved automatically in response to the littlest movements from Bolin knowing what attacks were likely to follow. She was pretty sure that Bolin was able to respond the movements the same way. Their history was making their fight more even since they knew what attacks to anticipate from the other.

Right after Bolin had jumped over a boulder Korra sent at him, he stood back up and the movement caused his hood to fall from his face. What the hood hid made Korra stop in her tracks. Burns. Burns covered his face. It made sense in a sick kind of way. The Agni Kai weren't exactly easy to subdue. It made sense that they would have gotten some hits in before...what happened. Still, the burns that covered his face made her shiver and her stomach churn with nausea. There were only a few small patches not affected by the burns giving his face a red and painfully disfigured appearance. It was no wonder that he wore the hood. He would stand out in any crowd. Her stomach churned again uncomfortably as she fought the urge to let her lunch join the for the moment steady ground between the two of them.

"It's not pretty is it?" He said smiling slightly, showing a hint of his teeth and another small glimpse of the person she had loved. Every time she caught of a glimpse, it just made everything harder. It was easier when he was colder and she could pretend somewhere inside that it wasn't really Bolin that she was fighting.

"Bolin come back with me, stop this, come home," she pleaded with her once best friend, not wanting to start fighting again but at the same time not able to sit back and do nothing. She realized her mistake as soon as the smile faded from his face.

"I don't have a home. I had one at the center and it fell. I had an apartment with Mako and it was destroyed, but I didn't care. My home was with Mako, even after we moved in different directions, Mako was always my home and he's gone." The coldness was there in his voice but now that she could see his eyes it wasn't coldness residing there but fury.

"We can be a family. I always thought we were before. Weren't we?" Bolin looked at her a long moment before shaking his head.

"It doesn't matter. Things can't go back to what they were. Besides...I can't give up...I won't give up. Not now when I've come so far." She could hear in his voice the double meaning in that. One was that he had made his way half through the Agni Kai and the other was that he had changed himself so completely to complete his objective.

"When does it end?!" Korra asked sharply. "When will you be happy? When will it be enough?!

"When they're all died," Bolin said with no emotion in his voice but the same fire in his green eyes. When he had first said that it had worried her a little but mostly she had thought he was just blowing off steam, she knew better now

"What happens then?" Bolin blinked several times but didn't answer. For some reason, that made her uneasy, though she wasn't sure why.

He shifted slightly and she knew he was about to bend again. She didn't want to fight him again but she moved so that she would be ready against whatever he threw at her. He surprised her by laughing. It sounded so much like it had that it made her even more nostalgic for the past.

"I'm not going to fight you," Bolin said like it was quite funny that she thought that.

"What do you call what we just did?" Korra countered not moving in case this was a distraction technique.

"A test," Bolin said plainly. Korra frowned. A test. What did he mean by test? It became obvious though after a few moments of thinking about it and running the fight they had through her head. Korra realized that neither of their hits were meant to kill or even seriously injure. In fact, it was oddly reminiscent of when the two of them used to spar with one another. He hasn't even used lava bending, his greatest and deadliest weapon especially after Mako's death at her. Korra hadn't even attempted to go in the avatar state, hadn't even really thought about it. She realized she had even stayed away from fire attacks, both not wanting to really hurt Bolin or remind him of what happened to Mako, even if she hadn't realized it till now. Even though they were clearly at odds, neither of them had been able to hurt the other. What did that mean? Why did this conversation/fight hurt so much?

"Sometimes I wish that things hadn't ended up this way," Bolin's more gentle voice startled her by sounding even more like himself. It made her swallow hard.

"Then stop," she said softly, " you can come with me," she tried again, trying to reach out to him to touch his arm but he stepped backward out of her reach. He smiled again but this time it was a sad smile that made her wince as it pulled on the scars on his face.

"Sorry Korra, I can't let them get away with it." Then she watched as Bolin clamped down on his emotions leaving his face blank. They were back to opposing ends. She sighed.

"You can't think I'm just going to let you leave and hurt more people," she said tiredly, not because of the fight. It was hardly the toughest fight she had ever had but more because of emotional fatigue she had every time Bolin spoke.

"Like I said, this only ends one of two ways. They all die or…" He didn't say what the or was but she knew that he had said before to others and it was written all over his face what the or was, he'd die trying if he had to. Before she could move Bolin stomped his foot and launched himself into the air.

"No, you don't," Korra said sharply before she launched herself into the air right behind him. They both knew this area, so it didn't surprise too much that the moment he landed on a patch of earth, he was gone a second later before she could even land. She launched herself after him as quickly she possibly could. That began the chase. Bolin seemed to realize pretty earlier on that she was following him and was doing his best to turn this way and that trying to lose her but Korra stayed on him. She wasn't going to let him dig himself deeper into the darkness. She wasn't going to let him hurt people.

Korra had been closing in, when she was surprised by a hail of rocks hurtled at her. She was able to evade them using airbending to jump out of the way but another hail of rock filled her vision. Once she evaded those, she realized how close to the ground she was and landed less than gracefully. She scrambled to her feet as soon as she could trying to figure out where Bolin was, only she couldn't see him. In any direction she looked, she couldn't see him.

He was gone.

She lost him. In more ways than one.


End file.
